A comprehensive introduction to the work of one of the outstanding intellectuals of the twentieth century.

Raymond Williams is a towering presence in cultural studies, most importantly as the founder of the apporach that has come to be known as “cultural materialism.” Yet Williams’s method was always open-ended and fluid, and this volume collects together his most significant work from over a twenty-year peiod in which he wrestled with the concepts of materialism and culture and their interrelationship. Aside from his more directly theoretical texts, however, case-studies of theatrical naturalism, the Bloomsbury group, advertising, science fiction, and the Welsh novel are also included as illustrations of the method at work. Finally, Williams’s identity as an active socialist, rather than simply an academic, is captured by two unambiguously political pieces on the past, present and future of Marxism.

Reviews

“The left's foremost cultural historian and critic... an acute and perceptive political commentator.”

– Comment

“Williams is the Western thinker who, along with Antonio Gramsci, has done most to enlarge our understanding of the political complexities of culture.”

Radical Broadcasts is an archive television season which will screen across London throughout April and May 2018. An exciting and provocative combination of documentary archive footage, and drama drawing attention to an era of British television where public intellectuals and theory were never far from our screens. The screenings will take place at Whitechapel Gallery, Institut-Francais, Horse Hospital and BIMI – further information on each event below.